281–286 of 286 posts
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I imagine it would be better for an economy that does huge amounts of exporting compared to importing (like China). Europe does a ton of importing so that side of it sucks.
A currency depreciation naturally leads to a reduction in imports, since the imports become more expensive.
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The ECB is printing money to give out loans to itself?
"Literally" was probably an exaggeration, but they are in a way. If you deposit $100 with bank A, and they give a loan for $80 to person B, you have $100 to spend and person B has $80, so $180 can float through the economy. The $80 debt should cancel out person B's surplus, but it kind of doesn't if interest rates are low enough because they'll never actually pay it back. That's my potentially poor understanding of i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Literally" was probably an exaggeration, but they are in a way. If you deposit $100 with bank A, and they give a loan for $80 to person B, you have $100 to spend and person B has $80, so $180 can float through the economy. The $80 debt should cancel out person B's surplus, but it kind of doesn't if interest rates are low enough because they'll never actually pay it back. That's my potentially poor understanding of i…
Where does the ECB, which doesn’t give loans to individuals, come into it?
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You’re confusing the EU with NATO. Trade with Russia was obviously positive for the EU, as can be noticed from the economic damage and energy availability crisis.
Short term positive, long term destructive. Ergo negative. Addiction to cheap resources prevented politically sustainable energy sector development. On top of that, it's likely that corruption was involved. Which is cancer that tends to cause more corruption in semi-related parts of the system. Once politicians sell out, it's much easier to bend them again. Be it pure greed or blackmailing.
Put another way, if it weren't for USA's hard stance, many large EU economies would have few misgivings about continuing to do business with Russia. And even hardliners like Poland AFAIK are still buying Russian gas through Germany, as do several others including Ukraine.
The reason they're doing that is because they need it, it's there and it's good for keeping their economies and societies in functioning order.
Was there corruption? You bet, former USSR states were and are drowning in it and the West was certainly not spared either. Doesn't change the fact that they need resources though and there's not a lot of alternative suppliers.
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> It obviously is a major crisis in Europe and has many ramifications, if all your neighbours mysteriously die in the same week it won't affect you personally but you surely will feel down or threatened. This premise relies on a mysterious, unknown cause though. It's more like your neighbors fighting your other neighbors.
See how NYC would do if NY State bombs New Jersey.
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I suppose "Euro falls to historic low against dollar" might have sufficed as a headline, but highlighting the relative values and the 1:1 threshold that was crossed (no matter how abstract it technically is) could help more readers connect with the story a bit more
Doesn't "historic low" mean "lowest it ever was in history"? That's not the case (yet).
No, not AFAICS. Because if that were so, then "this historic event" could only mean one single event, the most historic event ever. That's obviously nonsense; there are / have been many historic events. And if there can be many of those, there can also be at least several historic lows.